THE GREATEST: Just a year after winning a gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics, a Life magazine story on Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) was headlined “A Wet Way to Train for a Fight” and illustrated by photos of the boxer underwater in a Miami pool. Photographer Flip Schulke took the pictures. Schulke, also known for chronicling Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, died in 2008.

Ali, then just 19, did not really train underwater. “He led the photographer to believe that, but it was just a fabrication, that that was how he trained, by pushing against the pressure of the water,” says Keith de Lellis, whose eponymous Madison Avenue gallery is exhibiting 28 of Schulke’s Ali photos from 1961 to 1964. “He knew it would probably be a very interesting visual way to present himself.”

SIMON SAYS: You may have first heard Harper Simon’s ethereal folk melodies on the pilot of HBO’s hit show “Girls,” but on his new album “Division Street,” the singer/songwriter (and son of Paul Simon) takes on a rockier — and New Yorkier — edge. “I grew up in New York,” says Simon, “listening to the downtown, late ’70s rock ’n’ roll scene — Lou Reed, Television — so a lot of the album’s lyrics are set in New York.” Working with members of the Strokes, Bright Eyes and also with Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas, Simon says, “I got to play with musicians who I’ve admired, and just geek out on that as a fan, which is very gratifying.” So join Simon and his tourmates the Polyphonic Spree for two shows in what he declares is “a great place to end the tour: my hometown.”

SPACED OUT: “One can only guess that the space-journey theme hypnotized him,’’ The Post’s baffled film critic Archer Winsten wrote of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ back in 1968. “And while under this mighty influence he stubbed his toe.’’ Despite some of the worst reviews ever garnered by a major film, this slow-moving, largely dialogue-free and enigmatic meditation on the universe (and a rogue computer named HAL) became Kubrick’s biggest hit, particularly among us younger audience members who toked up during the climactic “mind-blowing’’ trip through space and time. A digital restoration is showing through Tuesday as the inaugural attraction in a summer series of classics being shown on the big new screen at BAM’s grand Harvey Theater, which has hosted live stage shows, movies, porn and church services during its 99-year history. 651 Fulton St., Fort Greene; 718-636-4100, bam.org. — Lou Lumenick

CHECK IT OUT!

ABRACADABRA: Coney Island summers are magical already, but you can catch the literal version on Sunday at Sideshows by the Seashore: The family-friendly “Magic at Coney!” show features classical magician Phil Crosson, mentalist Gary Dreifus, magician/comics Thomas Hayden and Lee Alan Barrett (also the master of ceremonies) and master manipulation artist Tango Magic, who does “a lot of sleight-of-hand, flashy magic — sort of like what you’d see in a Las Vegas showroom,” Dreifus says.

As part of his own act, Dreifus will be doing a straitjacket escape trick: “I’m going back to some of the historical magic that was done at Coney Island,” he says, adding: “The straitjacket is real. I obtained it 30 years ago, when I was working at Creedmoor Psychiatric.”

YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART: Jody Oberfelder has a heart as big as a house — Officer’s House 15 on Governors Island, to be exact. That’s where her dance ensemble is performing “4Chambers,” transforming four rooms and their corridors into chambers and arteries of the human heart.

Twelve audience members per show will journey into it like a World’s Fair science ride — interacting with the dancers, circulating through all the performance spaces and monitoring their own heart rates.

The piece has been a three-year creative process, inspired by a conversation with a cardiologist who prescribed dance to strengthen the heart. Oberfelder has put in lots of sweat equity, scraping and renovating the venue. “Nobody wanted to sit next to me on the ferry,” she confesses. “I was leaving plaster butt prints.”